


turned into the kinda person you'd always hated / well, i wonder how it feels?

by avosettas



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Body Horror, Chronic Illness, Dyslexic Beetlejuice, Gen, Vomiting, me projecting my psychological problems onto beetlejuice and my physical problems onto adam, platonic beetlejuice/adam maitland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22688434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas
Summary: “Oh, oh shit, you’re doing your not-restor-ray-tive nap thing, fuck,” Betelgeuse says, quieter than usual. It’s still not very quiet - Betelgeuse’s “quiet” is still a normal person’s talking volume.“I’m not, Beej,” Adam replies, voice strained. “I have a migraine.”
Relationships: Beetlejuice & Adam Maitland
Comments: 8
Kudos: 173





	turned into the kinda person you'd always hated / well, i wonder how it feels?

**Author's Note:**

> got a req for adam and beej content... i love vague reqs bc then i can do This! 
> 
> preface: i have chronic migraines and also something called idiopathic hypersomnolence which. is basically narcolepsy w/o cataplexy and the unexpected falling asleepy. basically i'm Sleepy As Fuck n they dunno why. i am Totally projecting this onto adam because it fits him!!!
> 
> i like to think beej has learned a bit from... everything. except by learnig he is also Extremely nervous tht theyre gonna throw him out and that in addition to his trauma from juno makes him. a bit of a mess. anyway
> 
> sorry for the typos in these notes its late lol. hmu @asriells on tumblr!

One would think that, with death, things would be… well, you wouldn’t have any physical illnesses anymore. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the case. 

In fact, in Adam Maitland’s case (and his wife’s, too), he enjoyed the addition of back pain to everything else. 

“Oh yeah, I mean. Us dead people can still get hurt. We don’t really heal well. Check it.” And then Betelgeuse had spun his head around like an owl. “I’m born-dead, so I’ll come back if I die, but hanging, man. Really cracks ya up.” And then he’d demonstrated that both Adam and Barbara could spin parts of their bodies that they physically should not have been able to - at the waist _and_ neck in Barbara’s case, and just the neck in Adam’s case. 

Barbara had vomited after that demonstration - odd, goopy black material that had disappeared before Adam could clean it. Lydia found it in the basement, two weeks later, when she and Delia started to clean it out. It was sinking into the cement floor. Betelgeuse had, Lydia told them later, made it disappear with a wave of his hand.

So now, in addition to his chronic illnesses, Adam had his broken neck. Which really, really didn’t make having migraines easier. 

He hears Betelgeuse before he sees him. The window is open - Barbara had said something about fresh air being good, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Adam’s head is pounding, and he can hear blood rushing through his ears. But he still hears the ripping of Betelgeuse’s suit on the windowpane, and the rush of the curtains as the demon tumbles through. 

Also, the resulting brightness of the attic makes him squint his eyes shut. Which, in turn, makes the pounding in his head worse. 

“Oh, oh shit, you’re doing your not-restor-ray-tive nap thing, fuck,” Betelgeuse says, quieter than usual. It’s still not very quiet - Betelgeuse’s “quiet” is still a normal person’s talking volume. 

“I’m not, Beej,” Adam replies, voice strained. “I have a migraine.” 

The bed dips slightly, and Adam turns to look at Betelgeuse. He looks mildly concerned - which, for Betelgeuse, means _extremely concerned_ \- as to Adam’s current state. “Isn’t that a kind of bird?” 

“What?”

Betelgeuse winces at Adam’s croaky voice, and seems to make a conscious effort to lower his own. “Y’know, the, the origami bird?” 

“Cranes?” Adam sits up and pulls his glasses from the nightstand. He places them on his nose as gently as possible. “No, no. A migraine is a type of headache, Beej.” 

“Oh. I get headaches, sometimes. Got a real bad concussion when I was a kid, so I still get headaches from that -”

“Well,” Adam interrupts before the demon can start rambling. “A migraine is a really, really bad kind of headache, that can make you dizzy and nauseous.” 

“Oh… I think I’ve had those before.” Betelgeuse says with a serious nod. “They suck ass.” 

“Yes,” Adam agrees, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Did you need something important?” 

Betelgeuse is, generally, bad at discerning what is important to him versus to other people. Or dangerous to him versus other people, or any adjective to him versus to other people. Nowadays, after a lot of long talks with… well, everyone, he’s developed the tendency to assume that what he needs isn’t important. Mostly going off the previous mistake he’d made, where he’d assumed that because _his_ mother was dangerous, so was Lydia’s. 

So now he won’t generalize, and it makes for some interesting conversations when Betelgeuse can’t conceptualize the importance of something, because he doesn’t want to assume, because _last time he assumed he lost his best friend because he did something stupid and then tried to kill her pseudo-ghost-mom_...

“Um. No. You can go back to your not-resting.” There’s a book in his hands. How on Earth did Adam miss that? 

“Are you sure?” Sometimes, it helps to ask him twice. At the very least, he’ll expand on what he wants. Usually, these days, it’s to not inconvenience anyone, because, Adam has learned, Betelgeuse is _terrified_ that they may decide to banish him. 

“Was, uh, gonna ask you to read this with me,” Betelgeuse mumbles after a moment, holding the book loosely enough that Adam can see the title. It’s Lydia’s copy of _H.P Lovecraft: The Complete Works_. And Adam knows that the words inside are tiny. 

They’d found out that Betelgeuse was - possibly, it wasn’t like they could get him an evaluation, considering he was _dead_ \- dyslexic over the course of a few games of Scrabble. He wasn’t a very good speller, and when pressed, he’d confessed to Barbara and Delia that he’d memorized the first chapter of the _Handbook for the Recently Deceased_ , by struggling to read it over and over as a born-dead child. Reading frustrates him, and spelling is worse. 

They don’t play Scrabble anymore, needless to say. But when Betelgeuse is bored without Lydia to pull pranks with or Delia or Barbara to follow around, sometimes he’ll pick a random book and go to Charles or Adam and ask for them to read with him. 

It was good bonding, especially considering all the ways Charles had tried to bond with him that had failed. 

“How about,” Adam closes his eyes, just for a moment. He’s drowsy, but he isn’t going to fall asleep - he wishes he could. “You read, and if you don’t know a word, I’ll help you out?” 

Betelgeuse looks skeptical for a moment. “‘M gonna get some words wrong.” 

“That’s fine.” 

Finally, Betelgeuse huffs a bit, a small laugh. “If you fall asleep, ‘m gonna stop, and I’m gonna find Charles, and you won’t get to hear about Cthulhu.” 

“Sounds good, Beej.”


End file.
